Still Plenty for Dodgers to Trumpet This Spring

Gary Sheffield isn’t the only one here.

Maury Wills is marching through wet grass and base stealers, gesturing, shouting, sweet home Dodgertown.

“Baseball the way it was meant to be played,” he says. “I’m trying to bring that back.”

Gary Sheffield isn’t the only one making demands.

Shawn Green is telling himself to take one more swing, crack, one more swing, crack, the last one to leave Holman Field, his tan as deep as his stare.

“This year there are less distractions, it’s easier to focus on what I need to focus on,” he says. “I love this spring.”

Gary Sheffield isn’t the only one who is blue.

The tarp behind home plate is blue. The foam behind the batting cages is blue. The fungo bats are blue. The seats are blue.

Morning storm clouds disappear and the sky is blue, covering the ugliness of early Dodger spring training like a fresh flannel sheet.

There are other things here besides a pouting, ungrateful superstar.

Sometimes it’s worth putting down the vitriol long enough to search for them.

Even if that search takes you across a wooden bridge and into a thicket of bug-ridden bushes.

This is where the Dodgers are practicing bunting on this Monday morning, underneath a net strung up behind the regular fields.

Unlike in recent Dodger spring trainings, everybody bunts. Everybody steals.

Everybody works on hitting the ball to the right side in the second inning with fewer than two out.

Everybody takes cutoff throws, and studies pickoff throws, and backs up outfield throws.

You notice, unlike in recent Dodger spring trainings, the Dodgers actually are training.

“It’s the game within the game,” Manager Jim Tracy says. “In order to understand how to play it, you have to understand the little things.”

One of those little things is Wills.

You say, “Welcome back.”

He says, “You have no idea.”

Wills, who has not worked here in six years, was an instructor with the Montreal Expos last season when his bosses asked him to work three days at Dodger Stadium.

It was going to be his first time there in anything other than a Dodger uniform.

“I thought about it, and I couldn’t bear to do it,” Wills recalls. “I called the Expos and asked them if I could miss the games. They said I couldn’t.”

So he showed up, put on the Expo uniform, and was walking uncomfortably around the batting cage when Bob Daly spotted him.

“You don’t look right,” Daly said. “You should be with us.”

“Thank you,” Wills said.

A couple of months later, he joined the team. Now it is the team joining him, trying to regain its long-lost instincts in a spring that is about a lot more than money.

Gary Sheffield isn’t the only one making demands.

Jack Clark is leaning against the batting cage, the former growler now whispering into the ears of the young Dodgers carefully walking over to learn.

Besides bringing the experience of countless big-game hacks, the new batting coach is also expected to teach that big-game glare.

“I hope so,” he says, glaring.

Oh, and about that home run.

You cannot talk to Jack Clark for the first time in spring training without bringing up the 1985 playoff home run for the St. Louis Cardinals that cost the Dodgers the pennant.

You say, “You will be booed opening day, guaranteed.”

He says, “Tommy has forgiven me. The Dodgers have forgiven me.”

You say, “There are fans out there who will never forgive you.”

He smiles and says, “It’s not like I haven’t been booed before.”

There is nobody booing Sheffield here. Except when he is talking to just-traded Devon White on a cell phone during stretching exercises--the Dodgers amazingly handed him the phone--nobody really notices him.

Sheffield is not the only headline here.

There is the one written in black shoe polish, guy by the name of Jesse Orosco.

He admits that, yes, the last time he was at Dodgertown in 1988, it was he who put polish on the inside of Kirk Gibson’s cap that led to a tirade that some marked as the first step toward a World Series championship.

“I’m glad Gibby didn’t pinch my head off,” says Orosco, 43, who will increase his appearances record of 1,096 if he is sound. “I’m thrilled to still be here.”

There also is the headline written in a familiar script of long, skinny letters, guy by the name of Ramon Martinez.

The Dodgers missed his clubhouse leadership as much as his right arm. They hope he is back. Part of him already is.

“The young guys, they are already coming up to me. This is good,” he says. “The more you say, the more they listen.”

As the Dodgers walk off the field Monday afternoon, Tom Goodwin is running solo sprints. Shawn Green is signing three dozen autographs.

There are bags of new gloves hanging from a truck, the smell of pine tar in the air, smiles from young anonymous players who stalk out of the clubhouse as if actually proud to wear a uniform that recently has been so often disgraced.

Gary Sheffield is not around. He is not missed.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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TOUGH SITUATION

Despite appearances, disgruntled outfielder Gary Sheffield still wants the Dodgers to trade him. D5

STILL SEARCHING

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SOSA WANTS TO STAY PUT

Sammy Sosa hopes to sign a multiyear contract extension with the Chicago Cubs--perhaps soon. D5